Dave Celesky founded called Redeem MI Land, a nonprofit organization inspiring communities of faith in Michigan to invest personally in land restoration projects. Dave describes how his home church, Unity Reformed in Norton Shores, Michigan, has supported the very first Redeem MI Land project, creating a prototype for other communities to follow. Dave’s church is also joining a cohort of A Rocha USA, an organization that supports Christian communities in doing environmental restoration work and integrating love for creation more deeply into congregational life.
Many thanks to Dave for hosting Ron and me one sunny afternoon as we visited the worksite now in the process of restoration from an old garbage dump to a healthy meadow and wetland.
TRANSCRIPT
David Celesky
We know that when Christ steps in and redeems us, that it’s not a one-and-done. We’re not instantly overnight made perfect and holy and everything is great, but we believe in something called sanctification, which means little by little and day by day and year by year, week by week, we become more and more Christlike. We continue to grow in that aspect. And so same with the land—like we might get all the big work done initially, but we’re going to have continual and ongoing care for the land so that it its health flourishes, day by day, week by week, year by year, and that work will be done both by members of the church, but then also members of the local community who might not even care what the church has to say about redemption yet.
Debra Rienstra
Welcome to the Refugia Podcast. I’m your host, Professor Debra Rienstra. Refugia are habitats in nature where life endures in times of crisis. We’re exploring the concept of refugia as a metaphor, discovering how people of faith can become people of refugia: nurturing life giving spaces in the earth, in our human cultural systems, and in our spiritual communities, even in this time of severe disturbance. This season, we’re paying special attention to churches and Christian communities who have figured out how to address the climate crisis together as an essential aspect of their discipleship.
Today I’m talking with Rev. Dr. Dave Celesky, pastor of Unity Reformed Church in Norton Shores, Michigan. I’m especially pleased to put that “doctor” in front of Dave’s name, because he just earned his Doctor of Ministry degree last spring through the Refugia Church Doctoral cohort program that my husband Ron and I led. I’ll be asking Dave about the nonprofit organization he founded called Redeem MI Land, with “MI” spelled “M-I” for Michigan. The idea is to have churches or faith groups purchase a piece of degraded land, and, with community partners, redeem and heal it. Dave speaks eloquently about how this work can serve as an embodied parable for redemption and create vital community connections through a shared project. Let’s get to it.
Debra Rienstra
Dave, it’s so great to talk to you today. Thanks for inviting us up into your world to talk with you today.
David Celesky
Oh, absolutely. My pleasure.
Debra Rienstra
So tell us about the land that we visited earlier this afternoon. What was going on there?
David Celesky
So the land out in Montague, I like to call it icing on a burnt cake. And the reason being is this piece of land, it used to be a wetland, originally, and then when the Chicago fire happened, that particular place in Montague set up a lot of sawmills as a lot of the wood to rebuild Chicago was floated down the river, the White River there, into White Lake and down into Lake Michigan.
Debra Rienstra
This is the 1870s.
David Celesky
Yes. And they made so much sawdust that the wetland soaked it up, became dry land. And then when the sawmills went under, they had metal foundries there. And then when the metal foundries went under, there was a railroad put in place, and then when the railroad closed down, it just kind of fell into a civic dump. People would just bring their household refuse and old appliances and whatever, and they would throw it on the land. One old timer in town, he came down, and he told me he used to shoot rats down there with his pellet gun.
Debra Rienstra
Oh my.
David Celesky
And after a while, around the 1980s, there was a big trend in Michigan to create rail trails. When we were on the land, we were walking on a rail trail as we went along the property. And Montague wanted to have a rail trail as well, except it was, well, it was a dump. And so what they ended up doing was, rather than move the dump, they came in and they stamped it down, and they covered it with grass and plants, and they called it good. So they buried all the trash just below the surface. And so that’s why we like to call it icing on a burnt cake.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, because the land itself looks okay. You don’t go by there and go, “Oh, look, a dump.” It’s just weeds and a few trees, and it looks okay, but it’s not.
David Celesky
No, no. In fact, you know, kind of like us, like on the surface, we look fine, we look all put together, you know, maybe a little scraggly, maybe we need a little shave, but, you know, just below the surface, it’s a mess.
Debra Rienstra
So, yeah, you can already see the metaphorical potential. So you found out about this land, or actually you were looking for it. Why? You wanted to start an organization. Tell us about that organization.
David Celesky
Yeah. So the name of the organization is Redeem MI Land, and I was talking about this at a classis meeting. And as I was talking about the idea of the project of taking land that’s been messed up and redeeming it as a way of creating this living metaphor, this parable of what redemption in our life looks like, I was speaking at a church in Montague, and as it happened, the city manager of Montague was there that day, and he was running sound, and he heard what I was talking about with Redeem MI Land, and he knew the story of the land in Montague, and he thought it would be a great connection. And so he and I connected right away after that meeting.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah. So this was your idea, or was it a church thing? How did it begin? The Redeem MI Land idea.
David Celesky
Yeah. So it began as I needed to have a project for this doctoral cohort that I had been part of, which…
Debra Rienstra
I’ve heard about that!
David Celesky
Yeah, you guys might know something about that. But it was birthed as the idea for the project. And so that’s how it came up, then up through the churches, and to be able to talk about in classis as wanting to get other churches involved with this right away.
Debra Rienstra
Right. So we should probably explain what classis is.
David Celesky
Mmm hmm. So I am part of the Reformed Church in America. I am pastor at Unity Reformed Church in Muskegon. And a classis is all the different churches that are part of the same denomination within—we draw the line at the county. Other classes are connected by common interest in what they want to do. Some are more geographical. Ours is geographical.
Debra Rienstra
Right, so this is all a very local project that you’re working on.
David Celesky
Yes.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah. So you have spoken often of Redeem MI Land, and written quite extensively, I happen to know, about Redeem MI Land as a living metaphor, which you mentioned, for redemption, which is a religious concept that can be somewhat abstract for people. So describe how you see this project, healing this land, as a metaphor. What are the connections between what you’re doing with this little piece of land and Christian theology?
David Celesky
Yeah. I’ll kind of talk through the steps or the process of Redeem MI Land as to how it relates to redemption. You know, the first thing that Redeem MI Land project does is to pay the debt upon the land. You know, we say in our lives that we have a debt, and that debt is sin, and it’s a price that we can’t pay no matter what we do. And a redeemer, technically, in the Bible, is someone who would pay the debt for another that they couldn’t pay. And so we want to make sure that all of our projects, that the land has been paid off, that it doesn’t have a risk of falling back into the same trappings that it was before. Now that can be a straight up land purchase to where then Redeem MI Land, or the church affiliated with a particular project are the technical owners. It can be donated. It can be a mixture of a few different things. The important thing is that there’s legal protection for that land so that it doesn’t get cleaned up and then someone swoops in and says, “Hey, thanks for the work. I’m now going to sell it off and strip mine it.”
Debra Rienstra
Yeah. So how did you finagle that for this piece of land?
David Celesky
This one is complicated. So this particular piece of land, because it’s right next to a rail trail, is technically owned by the state. It is a state park. All rail trail systems are state park kind of thing. So the DNR is the oversight of it. However, they allow the city of Montague to use and operate it as they see fit. And the city of Montague has then granted to Redeem MI Land permission to come in and to do what we see fit with it. So we got layers upon layers here of stuff happening.
Debra Rienstra
Oh, fascinating. Okay, so after the purchase, then what?
David Celesky
So then the next big thing is to find out: okay, what are the big obstacles? What are the big barriers that are keeping this land from being as it was created to be? You know, oftentimes it’s some form of pollution. And so in this case, it certainly is. It’s a dump, and that’s keeping it from being how God created it to be. And so the next thing we do is the big work of removing those obstacles from it—stuff that the land couldn’t do on its own, you know, and just like in our lives, we can’t remove the burden of sin that we have, the burden that’s on the land, which, you know, if we say that it’s bearing the burden of greed or sloth or any other sin we could think of, we could say that the land is bearing the burden of sin, and it’s not a burden that it can take care of on its own. And so we step in and we act as a redeemer in that way. We act like Jesus in that way, and actually getting our hands dirty and removing the problem from the land.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah. So that’s the step you’re about to go through with this piece of land. Also complicated. So tell us a little bit about how that part’s gonna happen with this land.
David Celesky
Yeah, so we are only a couple weeks away from actually digging in with our excavator, and so what we are gonna do is dig down. And we know that the trash and the rubbish beneath the surface goes down about six to eight feet throughout, and the excavator will pull it all out with heavy equipment and then bring that into large piles to where groups of volunteers, some from the church and some from the local community, are going to come together and sort through it. And so metal that can be scrapped, we’ll scrap, and we’ll put the money back into the project. Anything that can be recycled we’ll send off to a recycling facility, and the actual trash that can’t do anything else than go to a landfill will be brought to a landfill that’s better suited than just being buried by a river.
Debra Rienstra
So you don’t have the heavy equipment here at the church. You had to partner with somebody to get that to happen, and presumably that costs money, too. So how did that all come about?
David Celesky
Yeah, so we’re using an excavator out of Montague, but this is someone who is a Christian as well and was very excited to hear about Redeem MI Land through the city manager. And yeah, we’ve had to fundraise. And one of the things we’ve done for fundraising is we’ve had a 5k and a half marathon fundraising race that runs along the same rail trail that the land is on, and it was a good way to promote Redeem MI Land in the community, as well as through the church, and then to raise enough funds to begin the project.
Debra Rienstra
That is one of my favorite parts of this story—is your genius idea, because you are a runner, to have a fundraising run, which further makes this embedded in the community. So we’ll come back to that in a minute. But let’s let you finish the story of redemption. So you remove all the yucky stuff and then what?
David Celesky
So after the big, heavy work is done—most organizations might call that good at that point. They would say, “Okay, we did the clean up. We’ll come back in a couple years when it needs clean up again.” But in our lives, you know, we know that when Christ steps in and redeems us, that it’s not a one-and-done. We’re not instantly overnight made perfect and holy and everything is great, but we believe in something called sanctification, which means little by little and day by day, and year by year, week by week, we become more and more Christlike. We continue to grow in that aspect. And so same with the land, like we might get all the big work done initially, but we’re going to have continual and ongoing care for the land so that it its health flourishes day by day, week by week, year by year, and that work will be done both by members of the church, but then also members of the local community, who might not even care what the church has to say about redemption yet, but they do care about this piece of land in their neighborhood and in their community, and so they’re willing to come and to partner with us for the sake of the land itself.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, so they’re embodying what we would call redemption, but what anybody would recognize as this kind of beautiful healing. So what does flourishing look like for this particular piece? And how do you even know what flourishing looks like for this particular piece of land?
David Celesky
You know, on this particular piece of land, knowing that beneath the surface, where the water runs down into the river and goes into White Lake and into Lake Michigan, knowing that it’s not streaming through garbage every time that it goes there, for me, that’s kind of an initial flourishing for it. To see native plant species come back, and to see, you know, the wildlife that lives there thrive in health as well. And it doesn’t have to be crazier than that. We did an inventory about a year ago as to what kind of insects we could find, and what kind of plants we could find, and anything that had life. And so we’re going to continue to monitor that. And then after the work is done, the hope is that we’ll see an increase in those native species and a decrease in the invasive species, that we’ll see life thriving in there because the land is healthier.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, and I love the way you don’t expect it to be perfect, because three nativization projects that we’ve done…you want a clean slate. You want it all to be this perfect native— it’s never that. You’re always pulling out more invasives. It’s just you get ahead of it in a situation like this. So flourishing is never perfect, and I think that fits into the metaphor, too.
David Celesky
Oh, absolutely.
Debra Rienstra
There’s no such thing as, like, ecological perfection.
David Celesky
Well, and I’m glad that you say that, that it’s not perfect, because you know, when we talk about sanctification, we’re never perfect, not until Christ returns. And so if we’re saying that this is a metaphor for our own redemption, we’re not perfect. And so we shouldn’t expect the projects we do to be perfect as well.
Debra Rienstra
And they require constant maintenance, which we know about our souls as well, right? So one of the most wonderful things to me about this project is the way that it has led you, a pastor in a community, to make partnerships with unexpected people: people from the DNR, people from the city, people from local businesses. What has that been like for you as a pastor? You didn’t learn how to do this, I presume, in seminary.
David Celesky
No.
Debra Rienstra
How did you gain these skills? And what’s it like to communicate aspects of this project with folks like that?
David Celesky
Yeah. You know, I didn’t always work in a church. I’ve had secular jobs before that. I was a movie theater manager for a while. I worked at Sea World for a while and various other things. I kind of came into ministry later in life, and so I’ve had some experience working with people from all different walks of life. One of the things that I think is really important is, especially in projects like this, is to listen to people from the civic side or the DNR side, or from whoever, and what their wants and needs are just as important as what my wants and needs in these projects are, and to not feel like I’m coming in and like, “Well, this is the most important thing ever, and so I want to bowl them over,” but really have to work together in this and at the end, assuming that everyone has the best intentions at heart. Whether it comes from a place of faith or not, the fact that they want to see this land do well, and the motivations behind that might be different, but it gives us a place to be able to share with one another why we want this land to do well.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, and that connection, that networking, that building of community spirit in care for a little piece of land, it’s not a big piece of land. It is part of a beautiful spot. It’s near a campground, it’s near this trail, it’s right by this river. It’s a beautiful spot. But that shared concern for something so tangible, so embodied, is just a beautiful way to make connections between, you know, churchy people and people who may or may not be part of a faith community, just for the sake of that healing. It’s not because you’re trying to get them in your pew necessarily. It’s just for the sake of doing something beautiful and good together. So I think that’s so cool and such an important sort of goal or aspiration for faith communities right now is to make these connections. And that’s also why I love the run as a fundraising project. So did the run create even more community connections between your church and the community, besides the ones you were making just to get the project done?
David Celesky
Yeah, we were able to reach out further than just the immediate community on the run. You know, when people sign up for a race, you get all the demographics of, you know, what city they’re from. We sent out kind of an after survey, and one of the questions they asked in that survey was: what drew you to this race? Was it you just needed to get this distance in, or was it the environmental aspect? Was it the faith-based aspect? And by and large, it was the environmental aspect that people found it, and they were drawn to it, and so we were able to cast a wider net than just the local, local community. And some of those folks will probably come back and do the actual work after having a chance to see the land and to see why we were doing the fundraising.
Debra Rienstra
Nice. So I’m curious how people in your church are or are not involved. So how has this become known, become understood in the congregation? How much participation do you have within the congregation, and then how much from volunteers in the community?
David Celesky
Yeah. So my church is—there’s quite some personalities in the church, as with any church. When I first started talking about this, there was a handful of people that wanted to go out there and start doing the work right away, like, “Heck with the permits, heck with the fundraising, we’ve got shovels. Why are we waiting? Let’s just go and do it now.”
Debra Rienstra
Appreciate that attitude.
David Celesky
And so they were passionate. You know, this was something that resonated with them for one reason or another, and I almost felt like I had to put a bridle on them. Like, okay, we’re going to do this, but it’s going to take time until we’re ready to do this. Like, bear with me, because we’re involving the state level of stuff and the city level of stuff and the permits and all the things you have to do with that kind of thing, because we want to do it right.
Debra Rienstra
Turns out you can’t just dig.
David Celesky
No, no, no. You can get in big trouble, and you can work against the mission of what you’re trying to do. You know, it’ll leave a bad taste in people’s mouth for the church, rather than what we’re trying to do here is to, you know, show them a side of the church that maybe people haven’t seen before. We had folks from the church—we went out last summer and we just pulled out invasive species for a week. And our goal in that was when we tear up the dirt and we sift through it, and we take out the trash, we want to put as much of the soil that is there back into the spot, so that all the old stuff is part of the new stuff as well. And so in doing that, a number of people from the church came out, camped out there, went out there in the middle of the night with me to count insects with flashlights and bed sheets, and they had a great time. There’s some folks in the church who were part of the race. We have a pretty big running community within our church, and so we had runners, we had volunteers for the aid stations. In fact, in the race itself, all the different aid stations were operated by a different congregation in the area as a way of bringing them together. So a little ecumenical aspect in there. Otherwise, you know, a lot of the folks in the church, if they’re not able to physically get out there and to pull weeds or dig things, they’ve been very supportive in terms of, they know that I’ve been going through school for this, they know that it’s taking time, and so they’ve, you know, write notes of encouragement, or they tell their friends about it, or they they talk to other church people about it as well, like you know what our church is doing, and they go in through that.
Debra Rienstra
Ah, so there’s a little sense of pride, wonderful. So this is where I think what you’re doing is such a great example of refugia work, because you’re starting with this very small, very particular place, finding ways to create a refugia space out of it, a refugium out of it, and then hoping that there will be connections. So describe how refugia connects.
David Celesky
One of my favorite aspects of refugia is that these little pockets of life that, you know, have grown up and been protected despite the adversities around them, but they seek to connect with one another. They don’t stay by themselves as these little pockets, but when they can, they will grow into each other or reach out and touch each other. And so of these 83 different counties and these different projects, my hope is that once they start being established, they reach out to each other, they connect with one another. You know, they can train one another and share stories with one another, or best practices or woes, you know, times when things went poorly, and they can be there to support one another through it.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, and they don’t all have to be the same. They’re all still very particular to that particular place, but still have these connections that makes an overall difference and continues to inspire more places, perhaps, to partner with this sort of work.
Dave on the site before excavation begins, which will dig up the garbage beneath the service and allow restoration to begin in earnest.
Debra Rienstra
Hi, it’s me. Debra. If you are enjoying this podcast episode, go ahead and subscribe on your preferred podcast platform. If you have a minute, leave a review. Good reviews help more listeners discover this podcast. To keep up with all the Refugia news, I invite you to subscribe to the Refugia newsletter on Substack. This is my fortnightly newsletter for people of faith who care about the climate crisis and want to go deeper. Every two weeks, I feature climate news, deeper dives, refugia sightings and much more. Join our community at refugianewsletter.substack.com. For even more goodies, including transcripts and show notes for this podcast, check out my website at debrarienstra.com, D-E-B-R-A-R-I-E-N-S-T-R-A dot com. Thanks so much for listening. We’re glad you’re part of this community. And now back to the interview.
Debra Rienstra
So let’s go back into your mysterious past. You grew up in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Have you always cared about environmental and land use issues? Is that something that has been part of your life all along? Has it always been part of your pastoral ministry?
David Celesky
So the town I grew up in as a kid is a mining town. It was a town called Negaunee, and so I grew up in the aftermath of mining. And what I mean by that is, everywhere I would look as a kid, there was all these fences up saying “Caving Grounds,” “Danger,” “Keep Out.” The mine in my town had dug underneath the ground a little shallow, and so houses started falling in and caving in. And so they had to relocate some houses. They had to sequester off half the town because of the danger of the caving grounds. And so at a very early age, I was made aware that we can mess stuff up, you know, and we’re trying to do what you would consider maybe a good thing, you know, people are trying to have livelihoods. People are trying, you know, to boost the economy, or whatever it may be. But it does have effects, and it’s the regular people who have to deal with the effects of that.
Debra Rienstra
You were a very good little boy and always stayed behind the fences.
David Celesky
What’s the statute of limitations on that kind of thing? Everyone in that town knew where the holes in the fences were. We called it the lost city. We would go back there and run around and, I mean, there were streets, there were foundations, there were bridges. I mean, it was like a whole city that had been overgrown. It was a great place for a kid. Yes, it was dangerous, and since then, the city has fixed some of it and turned some of it actually, ironically, into rail trails and things like that, connecting different towns. And so you can go visit it now. But all that to say, yes. From an early age, environmental things were kind of on my heart. When I was in middle school, we had a class called Environmental Adventures, which put us in the woods and camping. And like we learned, you know, what kind of worms we could eat and how to start fires.
Debra Rienstra
Wait a minute, wait a minute. What kind of worms you could eat?
David Celesky
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Debra Rienstra
This did not happen in my faith formation, I must say.
David Celesky
We ate earthworms and crayfish and bugs and all sorts of stuff in that class, it was a lot of fun. But a big part of it was getting kids outside and getting them out in creation and not being afraid of it, and not, you know, holding up inside all the time.
Debra Rienstra
And making it part of faith life. Yeah. So that’s been part of your personal makeup. Has anything like this been part of your pastoral ministry before Redeem MI Land?
David Celesky
You know, in a church I was in before this church, we would do yearly cleanups, kind of like spring cleanup things in the cities. And we would take our young adult group and our youth groups, and we would go to different areas of our community, and we would clean it up. And people were always amazed as to how much trash they didn’t notice. You know, these were spots that they drove by every day. These were spots that were right in their neighborhood. And when we picked it up and we piled the bags upon bags upon bags together, it was always surprising to people, like, “I didn’t realize there was that much trash right there.” And so that was something early on we had done in the church. A big thing for me and my wife is, we would go camping with different people in the churches and try to get people into creation as much as we could. And to enjoy just, you know, the goodness and the beauty of Michigan.
Debra Rienstra
Of Michigan, yeah, absolutely. Have you found that young people in particular are attracted to this Redeem MI Land project?
David Celesky
I think so. I think younger people are a little disillusioned with the world that’s been given to them, and environmental aspects and climate change and all of that comes part and parcel with it. And so when they see something that can turn that around a little bit, especially a faith-based thing, to be able to engage that problem instead of sweeping it under the rug or pretend like it’s not an issue.
Debra Rienstra
Or just worrying about it without knowing what to do.
David Celesky
Yeah. And so, you know, like when we had the race, most people who responded saying that they were there for the environmental aspect were younger folks. I’d say 30 and younger.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah. So this is a way to say, “Yes, part of our Christian discipleship is caring about this too.” This is not something you worry about apart from your faith life that’s completely ignored in your church situation. This is something that is folded into—for really beautiful theological reasons—folded into our faith life. And so often people and young people don’t receive that message because churches aren’t doing things like this. How would you answer someone who said, “Why are we spending time and energy and money on this tiny little piece of land that looks fine when we could be doing other things. Why is this project so important?”
David Celesky
Yeah. You know, I think it comes back to that initial first question about redemption being an abstract concept and being able to do something tangible with it. You know, we talk about, you know, wanting to educate younger people in the church, on, you know, on the faith and Christian education and all these things. And we spend money on curriculum and teachers and all these things. And again, it just stays very head knowledge, very out there, and it might not have something to do with them personally. But when they can get involved in their own neighborhood, in the land that’s right next to them, with their members of their own community, and be able to actually share their faith with people side by side, and to be able to make these connections from what they read in the Bible, from what they hear from the pulpit, to what they know in their hearts, to what they can do with their hands—I think that’s invaluable. To be able to have that experience that they can go home with and feel like, “I am tired, I am dirty, I sweat a lot today, and this was part of my faith.” And it’s something that they can, especially with the continual upkeep of the land, it’s not just a one time event you know or a one time you know sermon, but it’s something that they can continually go to time and time again, and they can see it change throughout. And as they have ups and downs in their life and ups and downs in their faith, they can keep going back to this place and remember aspects of redemption in their own life.
Debra Rienstra
I think I recall that you have plans to have a little meditation area in the middle of the final version of this. Talk about that a little bit.
David Celesky
Yeah. So if you were to look at an aerial of it, there would be a path coming in through the south and a path coming in through the north, and they do little switchbacks so that you know, when you’re in the middle, you don’t see the path so much, but you’re surrounded by the wildlife that’s there. And we would have a bench put there, and the bench, again from the aerial, would look like a cross. So if you looked at it on Google Maps, you would see a little cross right there, but you’d be able to sit there and just able to be in this piece of creation, knowing that it’s been redeemed, and maybe you’ve had a part to play in that as well. And it can be a place where you could meditate, you could pray, you could eat your lunch, you could just take a moment out of your busy day and just breathe and just be in it.
Debra Rienstra
The project makes all these wonderful connections in the community, but also with other churches. But now I hear from a good source that you’re entering into a cohort program with A Rocha USA. So what is that going to look like for you and for a team in your church?
David Celesky
Yeah, that’s really exciting, because to connect with other churches that are like minded in this way, while we’re not doing the exact same project, it’ll be really good to see what another church is doing and what ideas they come up with, and how we can help them and they can help us. Redeem MI Land is really new, and so in that we’re kind of there with hands open and ears open and hearts open to learn from others who are also doing this and for similar reasons.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, so A Rocha’s Churches of Restoration program is also fairly new, but it’s one of many cohort programs that combine faith and environmental work for faith communities. So it’ll be fun to see what projects you come up with to be a part of that. Do you have other ideas?
David Celesky
Not yet. Still, we’re fairly occupied with this one.
Debra Rienstra
Yeah, fair enough. What are your hopes going forward for Redeem MI Land as an organization?
David Celesky
Yeah. So Redeem MI Land—in the last year, we became a nonprofit, which is really cool. My hope is that this one project would be a template that would be able to be communicated to other faith groups and communities and saying, “You can do this too.” And it might be, you know, it’s very scalable. So, you know, this project is about an acre in size, but the same message, the same story, could be told on a 10 by 10 piece of land, or acres and acres and acres, just depending on the resources in the places that are available. But my hope is that every county in Michigan at some point would have a project like this. So that’s 83 of those, and then once more of these are established, that they would connect with one another, that this project in Montague would have connections with the project in the next county over and then in the next county over, and they would become kind of a network of resources with each other, of encouragement for each other to be able to share the stories of, you know, what they did in their land. And every story is going to be a little unique. You know, this particular piece of land had a dump buried underneath. But, you know, a piece of land in a county two counties away, will have a totally different set of circumstances, totally different set of people, and to be able to share those stories and go, “You know what? This is still a story of redemption, and this is still a story of redemption, even though they come from totally different backgrounds, just like in our life. You know, someone might be, you know, born and raised in the church all their life, and someone may come from a totally different background, and yet it’s still the same Savior, and it’s still the same story of redemption, even though it’s very unique person to person and project to project. Later this summer, I’m going to be at Unity Christian Music Festival set up as one of the non profit booths. And my hope is to connect with other church leaders coming from all different parts of Michigan there and to be able to share this with them to help see if they might be the next project.
Debra Rienstra
How can people in Michigan find out more about Redeem MI Land?
David Celesky
Yeah, if they go to www.redeemmiland.org.
Debra Rienstra
And it’s M-I.
David Celesky
Yes, MI for Michigan.
Debra Rienstra
MI for Michigan.
David Celesky
Yep, a little play on words there, because it’s “redeem my” as in God’s land, but then MI as in Michigan land. So yeah, redeemmiland.org.
Debra Rienstra
Okay, so what are the people in North Carolina gonna do? Redeem NC land?
David Celesky
Yes, they’ll have to come up with their own name for it.
Debra Rienstra
Sorry, other states. It’s not quite as cool. But Redeem MI Land could still be a model for some other cool name that other people come up with.
David Celesky
Yeah, they’ll come up with a better name than I did, for sure.
Debra Rienstra
I don’t know, it’s pretty good. Anything else you want to add?
David Celesky
You know, I guess the only other thing I would add is, you know, this is very much a grassroots organization and practice. And you know, we are constantly looking for partners. We’re constantly looking for resources and support. So, you know that can be through monetary, that can be through prayer, that can be through connections of people. There’s so many ways that people can get involved. And if this is something that speaks to you, I would hope and encourage you to reach out to me through the website or my email, dave@redeemmiland.org and I would love to meet and talk.
Debra Rienstra
Dave, it’s been so fun to talk to you today. Thank you so much for your time.
David Celesky
Thank you.
Debra Rienstra
Thanks for joining us. For show notes and full transcripts, please visit debrarienstra.com and click on the Refugia Podcast tab. This season of the Refugia Podcast is produced with generous funding from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Colin Hoogerwerf is our awesome audio producer. Thanks to Ron Rienstra for content consultation as well as technical and travel support. Till next time, be well.
